Haley Stevens: “funding in this current year for activities in Afghanistan is $116.5 million. That money is being used to build border…”

“funding in this current year for activities in Afghanistan is $116.5 million. That money is being used to build border crossing points and police headquarters and to train and equip Afghan national police and other security forces in drug detection and eradication. A significant portion of those funds is still being programmed to be spent. There was a delay in getting that bill ready for expenditures for 2006 so there will be some carryover into 2007. We don't know how much that will be. The President asked for an additional $18.5 million for this year in this bill, and the committee supported that request. In addition to the funding in the Department of Defense appropriations bill before the Senate, the fiscal year 2007 Foreign Operations bill as reported to the Senate has $297 million for counterdrug activities in Afghanistan. The Commerce Science Justice bill includes $30.5 million for counterdrug activities in Afghanistan. This means in the current bills pending for approval, there is already $346 million for counterdrug activities in Afghanistan for 2007, notwithstanding the carryover money that is available. This means there is approximately $400 million that will be available in 2007 already and the Senator wants to add $700 million to that. That is an enormous amount of money. The British Government actually takes the lead in counterdrug operations in Afghanistan. As we all know, NATO is in there now.…”